Games Based Learning Supports Multiple Learning Styles

As we have discussed in the past (‘Ten Reasons why GBL works in Education’, ‘Boys will be Boys’, and ‘Kinect Games Based Learning’), we believe that games based learning supports different learning styles.  These are typically understood as visual learners, auditory learners and kinaesthetic learners (learning by doing).  This infographic (pictured below) gives more information about each learning type and some useful learning suggestions based on the characteristics common with each type of learner.

http://www.onlinecollege.org/what-type-learner-are-you

One of the reasons that games based learning works so well is possibly because (amongst other reasons) it makes use of these different learning styles.  In particular kinaesthetic learning can occur through the use of learning simulations.  In these cases, a real world scenario or situation can be played out and the learners can ‘learn by doing’ actions in a safe environment.

Some people question whether learning styles under this model should be used in instructional design.  At pixelfountain and games-ED, the key learning theory that underpins our work is Games Based Situated Learning (GBSL).  This goes further in saying people can learn better by ‘learning by being’ (see ‘Games Based Situated Learning’ and 'Learn by Doing AND Learn by Being’).  This is again extremely related to simulation based learning as people can put themselves into the position of a character in the virtual city, hotel, economy and so on.  For us, supporting VAK is a by-product of our instructional design amongst other benefits and is not the starting point.

What is interesting about the infographic though, is that it suggests that 27.8% of people are predominantly kinaesthetic learners.  This makes up the biggest proportion of learners.  They suggest the next highest proportion learn best through reading / writing, followed by aural and visual.  This could mean big things for games based learning, if accurate.

However, what is important is how the games are used.  If you have a workshop or classroom full of people, they are unlikely to all share the same learning preferences.  Additionally, some people may learn different things in different ways or need a combination of stimuli to really understand something.  It would be foolish to plonk people down in front of a game and expect them all to become experts in that topic.

This is where workshops and full lesson plans are important.  Games based learning is often misunderstood as people fear that the learners will fail to see the point of the game and may just play to win and then forget what they have learned.  This does not have to be the case as tailor-made games (as opposed to commercial games) can avoid this.  However, another way to anchor and reinforce learning and capitalise on peoples learning styles is to offer additional activities (see ‘Six Key Principles of Collaborative Games Based Learning’).  These could be as simple as a brief introduction on the subject and a few questions at the end.  However, they could also involve mini games and exercises before and after the main game.  This also serves the function of ‘waking people up’ and getting them enthused and engaged.  This is the innovative approach that pixelfountain and games-ED take (this page from our website explains perfectly what I mean).

A recent New York Times article talks about ‘Harnessing Gaming for the Classroom’.  It discusses several reasons why games based learning is so exciting and why it works.  It also discusses some general trends of games and technology being used in education.  It is definitely worth a read and explains how people can learn things by physically doing them rather than reading or thinking about something.  They give the examples of improvisation on the piano or catching a baseball.  They suggest that in the future, school children will be able to turn into the thing that they are studying and become immersed in a virtual world related to what they have become.  They give the example of becoming a molecule and this would make molecules more exciting as that molecule is you.  This really is immersive learning at its best.  However, current games and simulations offer a pretty good alternative for now (and for relatively cheap).

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Games Based Learning Interest around the World

This blog is not an in depth piece of research, but should be of interest nonetheless. Basically, the data is derived from our Blogger stats. Our blog has had around 21,000 page views at the time of writing, so it provides a decent sample size.

Page Views via Country

Entry	Page views
United States	5935
France	3417
United Kingdom	3376
China	1000
Ukraine	880
Germany	856
India	566
Australia	378
Russia	266
Canada	221

We have promoted our blog in the UK and USA through links to other bloggers and some of the page views are from these sources.  An analysis of referring sites indicates some key sites that we have nurtured relationships with or where we have posted about our blog. This shows that traffic is not purely organic.  For example GetIdeas.org, Linkedin, and Kings School * account for around 450 page views. Some of the views are also driven from our corporate sites (www.games-ed.co.uk and www.pixelfountain.co.uk).

Blogger map of our page views

Even though search engines and Twitter account for the majority of views, we would have expected a slight skewing of the results to the UK and US because of the promotional activities stated above. This might impact on the results shown in the table, but deducting a few hundred off the UK and US would not change the order. These are countries that are clearly interested in games based learning.  The French result is particularly impressive - note we have not nurtured any French link ups, so that traffic is all organic. The Ukraine and Russian results are hard to decipher as the source sites can be obscure.

Our blog is written in English, which is likely to skew the results. Taking that into account, can we put forward any reason for our results?  Possibly, an enthusiasm for entertainment games is the key to the interest in games based learning. A proxy for this enthusiasm can perhaps be seen in the number of games companies in a particular country. Looking at the contractor list on Gamasutra website shows a reasonable correlation with our page views, although again France is somewhat of an anomaly.

If anyone has any other ideas, we would love to read your comments. Finally, I wonder if other bloggers out there could share their data and we could do a meta-analysis. Wow, that would almost be like proper research.

* We wrote a case study of their use of our games-ED product on the blog, which the school’s site links to.

Motivation, Motivation, Motivation

Get them early!

Student motivation is obviously an extremely important topic for educators, researchers, parents and so on and we have talked about it previously, in our blog post ‘Gamification in Education’.  Encouraging children's intrinsic motivation can help them to achieve academic success (Adelman, 1978).  Motivation is essentially the drive to sustain, intensify and discourage behaviour (Reeve, 1996) and this can stem from both internal and external factors.  Internal factors include responsibility for learning, values and perceived ability etc of the child (Ainley, 2004).  However, there are also external factors that can affect student motivation.  For example, Ainley argued that types of schooling practices could promote or hinder motivation such as peer groups, tasks and instructional practices.  Educators can’t do too much about the child’s internal motivation, but they can definitely help in external ways.

But are the benefits of motivation that great?  It seems so (bullets from http://www.netc.org/focus/challenges/student.php):

• High motivation in students is linked to reduced dropout rates and increased levels of student success (Dev, 1997; Blank, 1997; Ames, 1992; Newmann, Bryk, & Nagaoka, 2001).
• Students are more engaged in learning when they are active and have some choice and control over the learning process, and the curriculum is individualized, authentic, and related to their interests (Anderman & Midgley, 1998).
• Intrinsically motivated students retain information and concepts longer, and are less likely to need remedial courses and review (Dev, 1997).
• Intrinsically motivated students are more likely to be lifelong learners, continuing to educate themselves outside the formal school setting long after external motivators such as grades and diplomas are removed (Kohn, 1993).

Intrinsic motivation is not quite the same as internal motivation and therefore, can be encouraged.  Intrinsic motivation is based on enjoyment of the activity rather than completing something simply to gain an external reward (extrinsic motivation).  Teachers can, in most cases, make lessons, subjects, topics etc more enjoyable, which could increase student motivation and yield the above effects.

Technology is one way that they could do this.  This excerpt comes from Alexandra Usher and Nancy Kober’s paper, Student Motivation: An Overlooked Piece of School Reform (2012):

“Creative educational uses of technology hold promise for increasing motivation for a generation of students who have grown up teaching themselves to communicate online, surf the Web, write blogs, or edit photos. Several characteristics of technology make it especially motivating, some scholars contend. Video games can build a mastery-based mindset by gradually increasing the level of challenge, helping students visualize complex concepts, and giving students frequent positive feedback. Interactive and social media technology can stimulate the interest of bored students and the participation of shy students. Web-based instruction can motivate students by creating more opportunities for active choice and collaboration. Educators around the country are incorporating technology into their teaching and a myriad of ways. Examples include using video games to reinforce concepts in math and science or incorporating Twitter into a real-time discussion board during class. Research on the effects of newer technologies for learning is thin, however, and experts caution that how the technology is used is the most critical factor.”

A literature review by Patrick Felicia entitled, ‘What evidence is there that digital games can contribute to increasing students' motivation to learn?’ (2011) also throws up some interesting findings.  It illustrates how some features of video games can promote intrinsic motivation.  The review demonstrates that games are employed to successfully increase motivation on the part of the learners, in a wide range of settings, for different topics (subjects), and to address the needs and specificities of different types of learners (e.g., gender, age, or special needs).  The review shows that games can teach both academic and non-academic skills, and motivate students to collaborate, share information, and increase their attainments.  These ideas are essentially what I was aiming to convey in my blog post ‘Unorthodox Uses of Games in Education’.

However, as we have mentioned in other blog posts (such as ‘Five Things to Think About When Using Games in the Classroom’), Felicia notes that games alone might not be enough.  He argues that additional mechanisms should be employed to engage, teach and change behaviour.  For example, game design (e.g., personalized strategies, adapted challenge or a good balance between educational and entertaining features), and teaching strategies (e.g., briefing, debriefing, and teachers' support).  We have talked about these themes before (for example, in ‘Six Key Principles of Collaborative Games Based Learning’) and both pixelfountain and games-ED products have these ideas at their heart as this page from our website shows.

These ideas are all rather theoretical, but we have blogged before about how these ides work in practice.  For example, ‘Is Game Based Learning More Effective Than Traditional Methods?’ and specific to gender, ‘Boys will be Boys’.  We have also covered these themes in the case studies of using our games-ED learning simulations in schools (Proof of the Pudding parts 1, 2 and 3).

It seems almost common sense to say that motivation can both alter student behaviour and attainment and that it can be encouraged.  However, this is often, as Usher and Kober put it, overlooked.  Motivational techniques also seem to be stuck in the past, which may be why they are less effective.  It seems odd to deprive children of the technology that they have been immersed in all of their lives, just because they are at school.  Children today have been brought up in an extremely stimulating world; it is no wonder that they lack motivation at school if teaching methods are outdated.  Maybe an injection of technology and games based learning is what is needed.  What do you think?


Resources

1. Adelman, H. S. (1978) The Concept of Intrinsic Motivation: Implications for Practice and Research with the     Learning Disabled. Learning Disability Quarterly, 1(2), p.43-54.
2. Ainley, M. (2004). What do we Know About Student Motivation and Engagement? Australian Association for Research in Education, Melbourne.
3. Reeve, J. (1996). Motivating others: Nurturing inner motivational resources. Needham Heights, MA, Allyn & Bacon.

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The Future of Learning Technologies

As we have covered many times in our blog we are living in an age where new technologies are being developed and released all the time and these technologies have fantastic uses in the world of education and more general learning.  A recent article discusses various learning technology trends of 2012.  These include cloud technologies (software online rather than on a single computer) and flipped learning (spending ‘home time’ doing things such as reading and listening to educational podcasts and ‘lesson time’ discussing and doing group projects).

One of the trends that the article cites is gamification.  It argues that games based learning is on the rise and it is effective as games “provide meaning through real engagement, immediate feedback and a sense of accomplishment that is well-integrated with sound pedagogy”.  In fact, the article quotes a neurologist in saying “games provide an individualized achievable goal that initiates the dopamine-reward system, which provides a powerful pleasure response”.  Scientific proof that games based learning is great :)  Another mechanism that occurs was discussed in our previous blog post, ‘Neuroscience, Stress and Games Based Learning’.

The article also suggests that games based learning works so well because it is a safe environment in which to explore.  I mentioned in a previous blog post (‘Unorthodox Uses of Games in Education’) an article entitled ‘9 ways virtual learning is better’ which is really worth a look and this makes the same point.  In fact number one on their list is “With virtual experience, there is no risk. No danger. No loss of money or resources (other than the cost of designing and doing the activity). Minimal loss of time. Not so in the real world”.

http://envisioningtech.com/education/

This is a nice little graphic from envisioningtech.com to represent the future of educational technology.  A large part of the visualisation is gamification, which they argue is so effective as it offers “instant feedback to acquired knowledge through achievements and reward systems”.  Another benefit is that is allows ‘self-paced learning’.  It looks like the future could be pretty bright for education technology, which could lead to some pretty bright kids.  Let’s hope that some of these technologies can actually break through the red tape and stagnation of the education system.

Kinect Games Based Learning

I have spoken in a previous blog post about the amazing uses for the Xbox Kinect with children on the Autism Spectrum.  However, there are also many other ways that Kinect technology can be used to teach a wide range of things.  The website http://www.kinecteducation.com/ has tonnes of educational games that people have developed for a wide range of subjects.  Some of them are a little basic, which is what you might expect for such a young market.  However, it is clear that the Kinect has great potential for games based learning.

I do recommend taking a look at that website as it is full of interesting games and lesson plans etc, but I’m going to focus on one game developer in particular in this blog who has particularly caught my attention.  David Renton is a games developer and lecturer based in Scotland.  He has created several games for the Kinect, which look both educational and great fun.

The first game is Kinect Angles.  This game aims to help children learn angles, percentages, fractions and decimals in a fun way.    In-game, the screen shows a picture of the game-players through the Kinect’s webcam-like system with superimposed images on top.  The aim of the game is to visually represent angles correctly with ones’ arms.  The game can be played individually or as a pair, competitively or not.  In David’s own words, the game “promotes active learning methodologies.  Pupils are engaging with their learning in a physical and multi-sensory manner, meeting the needs of different learning styles; aural, visual and kinaesthetic.”  One child, in a pilot lesson said, “It’s active and you understand it better than just doing it in your jotter.”

The second game is Kinect Time.  It works in a similar way to Kinect Angles, but is used to help teach children time.  Again, it can be played individually or as a pair.  In David’s words, “The point of the game is basically to set the hands on the clock to match the time digitally displayed, you do this by moving your arms; Kinect captures the motion and my game translates it to the hands on the clock face.”  Visit this blog post for a video of the game in action.